Debian: 17 anni di software libero, “do-ocracy” e democrazia
Stefano Zacchiroli
Debian Project Leader
23 October 2010 Linux Day — Modena, Italy
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 1 / 42 Outline
1 What is Debian? History An OS, a project, a community
2 What’s so special about Debian?
3 More in-depth Commitments Decision making Processes
4 Derivatives
5 Contribute to Debian
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 2 / 42 Prelude — the notion of “distribution”
distributions are meant to ease software management key notion: the abstraction of package offer coherent collections of software killer application: package managers
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 3 / 42 Outline
1 What is Debian? History An OS, a project, a community
2 What’s so special about Debian?
3 More in-depth Commitments Decision making Processes
4 Derivatives
5 Contribute to Debian
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 4 / 42 Debian: once upon a time
Fellow Linuxers, This is just to announce the imminent completion of a brand-new Linux release, which I’m calling the Debian Linux Release. [. . . ] Ian A Murdock, 16/08/1993 comp.os.linux.development
make GNU/Linux competitive with commercial OS easy to install built collaboratively by software experts 1st major distro developed “openly in the spirit of GNU” GNU-supported for a while
trivia: named after DEBra Lynn and IAN Ashley Murdock
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 5 / 42 Since then — 14 releases
1993 development snapshots 1994 0.91 1995 0.93r5, 0.93r6, 1.0 1996 1.1 (Buzz), 1.2 (Rex) 1997 1.3 (Bo) 1998 2.0 (Hamm) 1999 2.1 (Slink) 2000 2.2 (Potato) 2002 3.0 (Woody) 2005 3.1 (Sarge) 2007 4.0 (Etch) trivia: why does Buzz have a 2009 5.0 (Lenny) (Debian) swirl on his chin? 2010 (?) 6.0 (Squeeze)
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 6 / 42 Since then — 12 Debian Project Leaders (DPL)
1993–1996 Ian Murdock 1996–1997 Bruce Perens 1997–1998 Ian Jackson 1999–2001 Wichert Akkerman 2001–2002 Ben Collins 2002–2003 Bdale Garbee 2003–2005 Martin Michlmayr 2005–2006 Branden Robinson 2006–2007 Anthony Towns 2007–2008 Sam Hocevar 2008–2010 Steve McIntyre 2010– yours truly
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 7 / 42 Where do I fit in?
user since 1998 DD in March 2001 package maintainer ñ OCaml (team leader), XML, maths, Python, VIM, . . . Quality Assurance team ñ Package Tracking System http://packages.qa.debian.org DPL candidate in 2009 (FAIL) and 2010 DPL since April 2010
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 8 / 42 What is Debian?
3 aspects, interlinked: 1 an operating system 2 a project 3 a community
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 9 / 42 Debian: the operating system
completely Free Software ñ DFSG ñ contrib, non-free a dozen architectures alpha, amd64, arm, hppa, i386, ia64, mips), powerpc, s390, sparc 2 non-Linux ports upcoming features miscellanea. . . ports, stability, packaging system, documentation, old hw support, smooth upgrades, i18n/l10n, the testing suite, runs anywhere, technical policy, a lot of packages, The largest GNU/Linux distro ... porting platform 29’000 packages (Squeeze)
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 10 / 42 Debian: the project
Common goal:
Create the best, Free operating system.
Debian Social Contract w/ the Free Software community (1997) 100% Free Software don’t hide problems give back priorities: users & Free Software
Debian Constitution (1998) Structures and rules of a Free-Software-compatible democracy
Strong motive to join: ≈ 1’000 volunteers, world-wide ≈ 900 DDs + 120 DMs Europe > North America > Australia ≈ Japan > Latin American
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 11 / 42 Debian: the project (cont.)
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 11 / 42 Debian: the community
Open development we don’t hide problem fairly easy to impact the work (“show me the code!”)
Large amounts of communication mailing lists IRC channels (a few) Web services(, growing)
Large number of (tech-savvy) users users help each other, contribute packages, get involved
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 12 / 42 Outline
1 What is Debian? History An OS, a project, a community
2 What’s so special about Debian?
3 More in-depth Commitments Decision making Processes
4 Derivatives
5 Contribute to Debian
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 13 / 42 Debian: one of a kind?
1993 — not many distros back then 17 years later, lots of other distros
openSUSE, Linux Mint, PCLinuxOS, Slackware, Gentoo Linux, CentOS, FreeBSD, Arch, Sabayon, Puppy, Lubuntu, MEPIS, Ultimate, NetBSD, Tiny Core, Zenwalk, CrunchBang, Dreamlinux, Vector, Kubuntu, Maemo, Red Hat, aptosid, Peppermint, PC-BSD, Chakra, Salix, ClearOS, KNOPPIX, Xubuntu, Super OS, BackTrack, gOS, TinyMe, Zentyal, EasyPeasy, Frugalware, Clonezilla, Pardus, Meego, OpenBSD, Quirky, PC/OS, Zorin, Debian, SystemRescue, Element, Unity, SliTaz, Macpup, wattOS, Scientific, Mythbuntu, Slax, DragonFLY, Elive, linux-gamers, 64 Studio, Ubuntu, mageia, Nexenta, Parisx, NuTyX, GhostBSD, Kongoni, moonOS, LFS, Lunar, Imagineos, Untangle, Fedora, Yellow Dog, aLinux, Yoper, IPFire, BlankOn, Mandriva, PureOS, FreeNAS, Moblin, Linpus, TurboLinux, blackPanther, . . .
with many differences:
technical choices support release management packaging system release schedule user base target user look & feel ... community How is Debian different?
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 14 / 42 Debian’s special #1: package quality
“ Culture of technical excellence ” package design: Policy i.e. “how a package should look like” package testing: lintian, piuparts, archive rebuilds (FTBFS), . . . package maintainers are sw experts no 2nd class packages, all are equal
Debian release mantra we release when it’s ready
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 15 / 42 Debian’s special #2: freedom
Firm principles: devs and users bound by the Social Contract
1 promoting the “culture of Free Software” since 1993 2 free the bottom up
ñ in its software firmware included !
ñ in its infrastructure no non-free web services (for users) no non-free services (for developers)
Community awareness, users: know trust Debian not to betray sw freedom set a high bar for sw freedom advocates
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 16 / 42 Debian’s special #3: independence
Debian is an independent entity
no (single) company babysitting us living up on: 1 donations (money & hardware) 2 gift-economy . . . quite remarkable in today “big” distro world people trust Debian choices not to be “profit-driven”
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 17 / 42 Debian’s special #4: decision making
1 do-ocracy An individual Developer may make any technical or nontechnical decision with regard to their own work; [ Debian Constitution, §3.3.1.1 ]
2 democracy Each decision in the Project is made by one or more of the following: 1. The Developers, by way of General Resolution [...] [ Debian Constitution, §2 ] that means: reputation follows work no benevolent dictator, no oligarchy no imposed decisions by who has money, infrastructure, people, . . .
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 18 / 42 Outline
1 What is Debian? History An OS, a project, a community
2 What’s so special about Debian?
3 More in-depth Commitments Decision making Processes
4 Derivatives
5 Contribute to Debian
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 19 / 42 Social Contract (1997) one of Debian Foundation Documents tacit agreement between Debian and the community we declare that: 1 Debian will remain 100% Free Software 2 we will give back to the Free Software community 3 we will not hide problems 4 our priorities are our users and Free Software
5 works that do not meet our Free Software standards ñ not Debian, but hosted there ñ main, contrib, non-free
http://www.debian.org/social_contract
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 20 / 42 Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) the Social Contract relies on a “definition” of Free Software the other Debian Foundation Document guidelines only — not hard rules used to help decide what is part of Debian apply to the “license” of a given software
trivia: basis for Open Source Definition / Initiative
http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 21 / 42 Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) (cont.)
1 must allow free redistribution 2 must include source code 3 must allow derived works ñ although may require integrity of the author’s source code 4 must not discriminate against ñ person or groups ñ fields of endeavour 5 distribution of license ñ i.e. licenses apply implicitly / by default 6 license must not be specific to Debian 7 license must not contaminate other software ñ e.g. on the same medium
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 21 / 42 Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) (cont.)
some DFSG-free licenses: BSD, GPL, LGPL, MIT/X11, AGPL, CC-BY 3.0, . . .
some non-DFSG-free licenses: all the “bad” ones GFDL w/ invariant sections
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 21 / 42 Constitution (1998)
structure and rules for decision making in a Free Software-compatible democracy volunteers minimal “people management” “do-ocracy” ñ anybody can decide how to do their job ñ nobody can impose to others what to do
http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 22 / 42 Constitution — bodies
individual developers (= project members) DPL elected each year ñ represents Debian ñ coordinate project activities ñ decide upon Project assets ñ decision “garbage collector” (urgency / lack of responsible) DPL delegates secretary trusted organizations ñ manage Project assets ñ link with the real bureaucratic world ñ SPI (us), FFIS (de), Assoli (it), Debian.CH (ch), ASL (br), . . .
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 23 / 42 Constitution — decision making golden rule do-ocracy, no formal process formally, decisions are taken by:1 1 developers as a whole ñ with general resolutions or elections 2 the DPL 3 the technical committee (CTTE) 4 individual developers working on some task ←- default 5 DPL delegates 6 the project secretary
1overruling from top to bottom Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 24 / 42 General resolutions
initial proposal ñ post to a specific mailing list ñ requires seconds, depend on n. of developer discussion period ñ might lead to alternative proposals ñ can put “on hold” decisions of any body vote with Condorcet-based method single winner ñ super majority (3:1) required to change Foundation Documents and Constitution
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 25 / 42 Day to day organization: teams!
http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/
teams grow as jobs get bigger some “core teams” are DPL delegates, most are not examples ñ packaging teams for related packages ñ ftp-master ñ release team ñ security team ñ kernel team ñ debian-installer ñ debian-cd ñ ...
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 26 / 42 Package work-flow & release process Legend package installation Security UpStream Standard process Patches special/optional process maintenance responsibility (Manual) package upload exchange help, discussion automatic processing submission, notification
Sources semi official repository
BTS packaging Security human/ transitional developer/ group Team state maintainer builds
Security incoming incoming
unstable
unstable experimental
power user/ testing developer unofficial archives by proposed updates testing testing RM security
frozen volatile stable by user/ security updates proposed updates stable backups stable production RM
© Martin F. Krafft, CC-BY 2.5 Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 27 / 42 Outline
1 What is Debian? History An OS, a project, a community
2 What’s so special about Debian?
3 More in-depth Commitments Decision making Processes
4 Derivatives
5 Contribute to Debian
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 28 / 42 Interlude — derivatives how to
Free Software 101 Freedom #2, to redistribute copies Freedom #3, to improve the program, and release improvements
When applied to distros: derived distributions, AKA derivatives
How? 1 take existing packages and add extras 2 patch & rebuild packages as needed 3 sync periodically
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 29 / 42 Debian derivatives
Debian: a base for ≈120 derivatives distrowatch.com Linspire, Skolelinux, Liurex, Mint, LiMux, Sidux, gnuLinEx, grml, MEPIS, Xandros, Ubuntu, Univention, Damn Small Linux, Collax, Euronode, Floppix, Gibraltar, Kanotix, Knoppix, PureOS, gNewSense, 64 Studio, Elive, Freespire, Jolicloud, Kurumin, Maemo, Neopwn, OpenZaurus, Parsix, Xebian, Hackable:1, aptosid, . . .
Why? quality & licensing assurances solid base system huge package base reduce effort
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 30 / 42 A Debian derivative example — Ubuntu
started in 2004 by Canonical Linux for human beings
Debian derivative, periodic fork-merge release cycle initial staff: mostly “high-profile” DDs historical archive correlations main ↔ corporate universe ↔ community most popular Debian derivative larger user base than Debian (most likely)
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 31 / 42 Debian, Ubuntu, and upstreams
Debian: a “special” upstream off the shelf packages, not bare bone software quantitatively relevant. . .
picture is courtesy of Lucas Nussbaum
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 32 / 42 Ubuntu: work-flow and relationship with Debian
Upstream projects data for Lucid Lynx main + universe Debian rationale: universe is a selling point
Patch 7% Debian → Ubuntu 74% not just “pull” 18% some “push” too: give back to Debian
Ubuntu picture is courtesy of Lucas Nussbaum
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 33 / 42 Drowning in derivatives
Debian derivatives( ≈120) Linspire, Skolelinux, Liurex, Mint, LiMux, Sidux, gnuLinEx, grml, MEPIS, Xandros, Ubuntu, Univention, Damn Small Linux, Collax, Euronode, Floppix, Gibraltar, Kanotix, Knoppix, PureOS, gNewSense, 64 Studio, Elive, Freespire, Jolicloud, Kurumin, Maemo, Neopwn, OpenZaurus, Parsix, Xebian, Hackable:1, aptosid, . . .
Ubuntu derivatives Ubuntu Studio, Mythbuntu, ArtistiX, Asturix, Goobuntu, LinuxMCE, nUbuntu, Peppermint, TurnKey Linux, Zenix, . . .
Nice song and dance, but all the above: 1 should be sustainable... 2 . . . and benefit Free Software as a whole
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 34 / 42 The distribution pipeline
yesterday...
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 35 / 42 The new distribution pipeline
... today
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 35 / 42 The new distribution pipeline
... today
That’s wonderful! freedom spreads more eyeballs swallow more bugs more potential contributors But.
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 35 / 42 Free Software 101 — redux
Free Software is bigger and more important than Debian, Ubuntu, and any other distro or project
Free Software golden rules and the distro pipeline
1 give back, i.e. reduce patch flow viscosity 2 give credit where credit is due
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 36 / 42 Outline
1 What is Debian? History An OS, a project, a community
2 What’s so special about Debian?
3 More in-depth Commitments Decision making Processes
4 Derivatives
5 Contribute to Debian
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 37 / 42 Contributing — donate to Debian even if completely volunteer-driven, Debian uses resources hardware for essential services ñ archive, buildds, devel. machines, . . . money for hw-related services ñ guarantees, shipments, hosting, . . . money to sponsor developer meetings ñ strengthen the community ñ get work done
Donations donations: http://www.debian.org/donations partners program: http://www.debian.org/partners
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 38 / 42 Contributing — work with Debian
test, report, triage, fix bugs ñ reportbug on your Debian ñ http://bugs.debian.org translation (it) ñ http://wiki.debian.org/it/DebianWiki ñ http://wiki.debian.org/L10n/Italian ñ http://lists.debian.org/debian-l10n-italian/ documentation help with packaging
http://wiki.debian.org/HelpDebian
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 39 / 42 Contributing — join Debian choose your commitment: package maintainer maintain packages, via sponsoring Debian Maintainer (DM) upload your own advocacies required Debian Developer (DD) become a project member upload access to all the archive voting rights all kind of contributions are equally welcome!
Zack’s tips for wannabe Debianers choose a team: http://wiki.debian.org/Teams stay on their mailing list and IRC channel triage bugs, test patches, etc. (for packagers) . . . the rest will come!
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 40 / 42 Want to know more?
on the web ñ http://www.debian.org ñ http://wiki.debian.org mailing lists: http://lists.debian.org IRC (debian-* channels on irc.debian.org) ask me!
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 41 / 42 Thanks!
Questions?
Stefano Zacchiroli [email protected] http://upsilon.cc/zack
about the slides: available at https://gitorious.org/zacchiro/talks/trees/master/2010/201010-linuxday copyright © 2010 Stefano Zacchiroli license CC BY-SA 3.0 — Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian) Debian: do-ocracy e democrazia Modena, Italy 42 / 42